While only an eighth of an inch in size, the tiny southern pine beetle has taken a huge bite out of New Jersey’s treasured pinelands this year — 14,000 acres and counting, according to authorities.

The devastation to South Jersey’s rare piney habitat is about seven to 10 times that of any other year since the tiny bug first emerged as a pest in the Garden State in 2001. Prior to its arrival in the state earlier this decade, the beetle, also known as the southern pine bark beetle, had been spotted only once before, in 1938.

"We’ve never seen any documentation of past infestations of southern pine beetles involving so many thousands of acres. This is pretty new to us. They are all over the place, from Cape May through Atlantic County, which has the bulk of them. They also have two locations as far north as Monmouth County," said David Finley of the New Jersey Forest Service.

Past outbreaks in 2002 and 2003 covered 1,270 acres and 2,508 acres respectively in South Jersey, while more than 93,000 multiple-tree infestations were detected in 2002 in the southern United States, where the bug has been traditionally considered the region’s worst pine-killer. The beetle’s move north has foresters fearing multiple threats to the rare habitat of South Jersey, where the 1.1 million-acre Pinelands Natural Reserve was preserved by Congress in 1978.

The unique pine and sandy habitat is home to 43 state-threatened or endangered wildlife species.

"One issue is that the southern pine beetle kills trees pretty quickly, leaving the fire hazard of standing trees. The fuel loading for forest fires doesn’t end at public lands. The beetles move to private lands too," said James Barresi, a deputy director at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service.

The beetle has a traditional role in nature. Along with other native, tree-chewing insects in North America, it joins forest fires in destroying unmanaged, mature tree stands to allow for new, successional forests and offer diverse habitats for a variety of wild creatures. But New Jersey’s forests and ecosystems already are troubled by years of development, pollution, fragmentation and foreign bugs, plants and pathogens destroying the natural balance.

The southern pine beetle, also known as the southern pine bark beetle, is now an unwanted, lethal addition to the assault,

"We live in a different world, now," said Bob Williams, a private forester who documented the beetle’s New Jersey debut nine years ago.

"Where it (the beetle) would normally have a role in nature, it is now killing our best stands of pitch-pine in the lowlands — our biggest, oldest trees that have really just begun to recover from hundreds of years of brutalization by man. These are globally threatened ecosystems we spent millions of dollars to preserve," Williams said.

Andrew Mills/The Star-LedgerDetail shot of insect holes in the bark of a pine tree in an area of about 700 acres of the Port Republic Wildlife Management Area in the Pine Barrens that has been hit hard by the tiny southern pine beetle.

The southern pine beetle takes on all species of pines, but prefers pitch, shortleaf, pond, and loblolly — all of which cover South Jersey.

There is no spraying program to battle the bug. Foresters said that when a natural predator, the checkered beetle, is not plentiful enough to combat the southern invader, the only way to stop an infestation is by cutting what amounts to fire breaks in the forests.

The bug assault begins with beetle pairs boring into a pine to create a gallery in the inner bark where the female beetle lays its eggs. Larva emerges from the eggs to tunnel further into the soft inner bark and eventually settle in another layer of bark in a pupa stage.

They eventually emerge as adults, chew their way out of the tree and fly off to begin a new assault on a new tree in a cycle that can repeat itself seven times each year. During an infestation, beetles at all different stages of development will be found.

"They can kill a tree pretty much in a matter of a three to four week period, and they also carry blue stain fungus, which clogs the vascular system of a pine tree," said Finley of the state Forest Service.

The killer fungus acts in concert with the beetle by suppressing the "pitch" or the sticky sap a pine tree naturally emits to thwart an insect assault. In fact, beetles prefer to attack trees that are already stressed by another force and unable to mount a defense, said Dr. Ronald Billings, forest pest manager for the Texas Forest Service, which monitors beetle patterns in the United States.

In a report earlier this year, he predicted New Jersey’s outbreak.

"Very dry or very wet conditions, extremes in temperatures and rainfall, all lead to outbreaks. Also large areas of pines that are not managed, such as older stands where the trees are stressed because of overcrowding. The beetles are attracted to stressed stands and once you get a large infestation, they can attack and kill healthy trees," he explained.

New Jersey foresters blame the assault this year on a warm, although snowy winter that was followed by drought conditions. Winter temperatures failed to close in on zero degrees Fahrenheit this past year, as in the outbreak years of 2002 and 2003.

The Texas Forest Service said it knew the New Jersey outbreak was coming. Billings said they placed traps in the spring throughout the bug’s range to capture the southern pine beetle and it’s main predator. Where captured beetles outnumbered their predators, an outbreak was anticipated.

"New Jersey is one of the few places we found beetles, and beetles outnumbering predators this spring," Billings said.